Chapter 6: The First Stitch

Valentina POV

Milan smelled like money.

I smelled it the moment I stepped off the bus, Matteo strapped tightly to my chest and a single bag slung over my shoulder. The city glittered all around me, designer boutique shops, expensive luxury cars, and women wearing clothes that cost more than I had ever earned in a whole month. I stood on the pavement outside the station, allowing myself to stare at it all for exactly thirty seconds.

Then, I started walking.

I found a cheap apartment in a building that should have been torn down. It was just one room with a kitchen sink that leaked and a window that wouldn't close all the way. The landlord was a short man with a large stomach who came to the door in his undershirt. He looked at me, at Matteo on my chest, at my single bag, and at the 4,000 euros I had hidden inside the lining of my coat.

"How long do you want it for?" he asked.

"As long as you'll have me," I replied.

He charged me double the normal price. I paid it without arguing. I had no other choice and he knew it, and we both understood each other perfectly from that moment on.

I bought a secondhand crib from a woman two floors up who was moving out. Then, I bought a sewing machine from a pawn shop on the corner for two hundred euros. It left me with less money than I wanted, but it was still better than nothing. I set the machine down on the kitchen table, put Matteo in his crib, and finally sat down in front of it at eleven o'clock at night.

*Alright,* I thought to myself. *Start.*

So, I started.

I sewed at night because the days were completely for Matteo. I made dresses from cheap fabric, remnants, discards, and bolts of cloth that the wholesale shops sold off at the end of the week for almost nothing. I kept the designs simple with clean lines. It was the kind of dress that looked like it cost four times what it actually did, as long as you cut it correctly and finished the seams properly.

I sold them at a street market on Saturday mornings, balancing Matteo on my hip while the dresses hung from a rail I had built out of a broken clothes rack and two broom handles.

Few weeks in, a woman stopped in front of my rail and picked up a black silk slip dress I had finished at two in the morning. She turned it over, checked the stitching on the seam, and held it up to the light.

"These are good," she said, looking up. "Where did you train?"

"Nowhere."

She looked closely at me then. Not at the dresses, but at me. She noticed the dark circles under my eyes, the baby on my hip, and the rough calluses across my fingers that no amount of hand cream could fix.

"You're lying," she said.

"Yes," I admitted. "But the dresses are still good."

She laughed, a real, sudden, and unguarded laugh, and held out her hand. "Sofia Lanza."

"Valentina."

"Just Valentina?"

"For now."

She bought the slip dress and two other pieces, paying full price without trying to negotiate. Before she left, she handed me her business card. On the back, she had written a phone number, and under it, in small, neat handwriting: *call me when you get tired of the market.*

I called her weeks later.

"You need a name," Sofia told me. We were sitting in her kitchen with Matteo asleep in his carry seat on the floor between us. Both of us were drinking coffee that was far too strong, because neither of us had slept enough to enjoy it mild.

"I have a name."

"A brand name. Something that sounds like money." She turned her coffee cup in her hands. "What do you want people to feel when they put on your clothes?"

I thought about that for a moment. I thought about every room I had ever walked into wearing something I had sewn myself, the way it changed how I stood, how I moved, and how much space I took up.

"Like nobody can touch them," I said.

Sofia smiled slowly. "Noir Donna."

I repeated it back quietly. "Noir Donna."

"Dark woman," she said. "Untouchable. Expensive." She raised her cup to me. "It suits you."

The first illegal business offer came four months later. His name was Russo. He was a compact, well-dressed man in his fifties who smelled of expensive cologne and bad intentions. He walked into my small design studio on a Tuesday afternoon as if he had an appointment I hadn't agreed to.

"I've been watching your business," he said, sitting down without being asked.

"I haven't been watching yours," I replied.

He smiled as if that were a funny joke. "I own clubs, restaurants, and a few import businesses." He set a business card on my table. "I need somewhere to move money. Clean money. The kind that comes out the other side looking like it was earned through hard work and good taste."

I looked at the card, but I didn't pick it up.

"Fashion is perfect for this," he continued calmly. "Invoices can be inflated. Orders can be completely made up. A small brand that's growing quickly, no one asks questions. No one looks too closely. Ten percent of everything that moves through is yours."

"I don't want to know where the money comes from," I said.

"You won't."

I looked at him for a long, quiet moment. I thought about the leak under my kitchen sink that the landlord still hadn't fixed. I thought about the beautiful fabric I had put back on the shelf last week because I couldn't afford it yet. I thought about Matteo's crib, the secondhand slats, and the way I checked on him every single night before I went to sleep just to make sure he was still breathing.

Ten percent was more money than I currently made in a month.

"If this ever comes back to me," I warned him, "I will make sure it comes back to you first."

He nodded as if that were a completely fair condition. "Naturally."

"Then we understand each other."

He picked his card back up off the table, which told me he was a careful man, and left. I sat in the quiet room for a long time after the door closed. Then, I opened my notebook and started working out the numbers.

The drugs came even later. They arrived the way everything else had come, through a contact of a contact, a quiet conversation, and a question asked so carefully it barely sounded like a question at all.

A man named Fiorelli needed a delivery system. He wanted something clean, reliable, and capable of crossing international borders. Fashion shipments moved across countries without the heavy scrutiny that other cargo attracted. Fabric from Morocco, leather from Turkey, and silk from further east passed through daily. Customs officers simply opened the crates, saw what the shipping paperwork said, and moved right on.

"There would be packages," Fiorelli explained.

"Hidden under the fabric," I replied.

"You understand quickly."

"I understand that you chose me because I'm a young woman with a baby and a small business, and nobody looks twice at someone like me." I met his eyes directly. "That's exactly what I am to you."

He remained quiet.

"So make it worth being that," I said.

He did.

The first illegal shipment arrived at midnight on a Thursday. I met the delivery truck in the dark alley behind my building. Matteo was safely asleep upstairs with Sofia, who had asked zero questions and brought over a bottle of wine. The crates were stacked neatly, marked *silk, handle with care*, which I would have found funny under different circumstances.

I moved them all into a storage unit I had rented two streets over. I logged the delivery in a secret notebook I kept hidden safely under the floorboards, right alongside Russo's first financial ledger and a copy of every fake invoice I had ever inflated. The next morning, I deposited the cash across seven different accounts in four different banks, a hundred and fifty euros here, two hundred there, keeping the amounts small so they wouldn't catch anyone's eye.

That night, I came home, picked Matteo up out of his crib even though he was fast asleep, and held him tightly against my chest in the dark. He made a small, soft sound and pressed his face into my neck the way he always did. I stood there in my single room with the leaking sink and the broken window, and I cried.

I didn't cry because I was frightened.

I cried because I wasn't frightened enough to stop.

I had originally told myself that this was just temporary. It was just until the fashion business could stand on its own two feet. It was just until Matteo had a real future, one that didn't start in a condemned building with a landlord who ripped us off just because he could.

But standing there in the dark with my son in my arms, seven bank accounts, and an illegal notebook hidden under the floorboards, I already knew the truth. *Temporary* was just a word I had used to make myself feel like a better kind of woman than I actually was.

I was not a different kind of woman.

I was exactly this kind.

I put Matteo gently back into his crib, straightened out his blanket, and walked right back to the sewing machine. There was a dress due on Friday, and I had work to do.